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Gen III Battle Frontier Discussion and Records
- Thread starter Valentino23
- Start date
Can this gengar set work with explosion instead of substitute?
Hey! Been playing the Emerald battle frontier for decades now but just came across this thread. Been playing Emerald on an emulator recently and am currently on a streak in the Dome. First time doing the Dome in years. All Pokemon used are legal but have invalid PIDs. Below is my team at Lvl 100:
Zapdos Lum Berry, Modest
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 30 Atk, 30 SpAtk
Thunderbolt
HP Grass
Drill Peck
Toxic
Swampert Leftovers, Relaxed
EVs: 100 HP, 100 Atk, 100 Def, 100 SpAtk, 100 SpDef, 10 Speed
Earthquake
Surf
Ice Beam
Counter
Slaking Choice Band, Adamant
EVs: 252 Atk, 6 Def, 252 Speed
Hyper Beam
Earthquake
Shadow Ball
Aerial Ace
I grew up playing with Zapdos with Extrasensory traded from XD to my cartridge but I've found Toxic works better. Drill Peck for any Hera or Breloom that starts getting out of control. Toxic mostly for Cradily and any other Double Team/Curse/Calm Mind mons I run into. T bolt kills the plethora of water types strewn about the facility. (I ALWAYS fall for the T bolt into Milotic mirror coat smh). It usually survives one Ice Beam even from STAB users. Can 1v1 most water/ice types. HP Grass kills anything quad weak to Ground (namely Tucker's Swampert). Fun fact: Mirror Coat doesn't work on HP Grass. Great synergy with Swampert, can also switch into Earthquakes. I used BrightPowder for the first 20 rounds or so but switched to Lum since I kept almost losing to Ice Beam freezes.
Swampert is a monster but I've found falls off when his EVs are spread too thin (grew up playing with my starter in the BF before I knew about EVs). This spread gives him the perfect balance of bulk and offense. The speed investment lets him outspeed other Swamperts. Ice beam kills every Dragonite set and almost every Salamence set. EQ kills most T-tar sets. Only weakness is grass types and anything with Giga Drain which Zapdos switches into nicely. Decades ago I used Counter for the Swampert mirror match but found it works best on Machamps. Not familiar enough with scouting to use it to its full potential, thinking of switching it out for Rock Slide. 1v1s anything that's not Grass/has Giga Drain.
Slaking is also a monster. CB Hyper Beam obliterates anything. Shadow Ball and EQ for coverage. Aerial Ace for Double Team mons that get out of control.
Usually I'll lead Zapdos/Swampert, whatever has more favorable matchups, and Slaking in the back to clean up. The Latis can only be dealt with by Slaking Shadow Ball. T Tar and D nite are scary but Swampert can 1v1 them. Again, this is my first attempt so far, just kinda vibing doing whatever. Lost once so far to Tucker 2 on Round 10 (my team was Swampert/Zapdos/Metagross), match ended in Swampert/Zapdos v. Latias and I lost because Calm Mind exists. For some reason Tucker ALWAYS uses Swampert Metagross against this team. Makes the final fight every 5 rounds really predictable.
My original team decades ago on my cartridge was my starter Swampert with randomly spread EVs, Zapdos traded from XD with Extrasensory, and Metagross with Quick Claw Explosion. Wayyyy back when all I had was my starter leveled to 70 something and somehow got Silver on the Pike with only Swampert lol. Suuuuuuper familiar with the Emerald Battle Frontier. Everything you guys are doing here is amazing! So happy to see there's such a community around this. If my cartridge still works I'll upload screenshots of my records but so far here's what I've got on Emulator (I've got the battery file but have no idea how to upload it):
Zapdos Lum Berry, Modest
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 30 Atk, 30 SpAtk
Thunderbolt
HP Grass
Drill Peck
Toxic
Swampert Leftovers, Relaxed
EVs: 100 HP, 100 Atk, 100 Def, 100 SpAtk, 100 SpDef, 10 Speed
Earthquake
Surf
Ice Beam
Counter
Slaking Choice Band, Adamant
EVs: 252 Atk, 6 Def, 252 Speed
Hyper Beam
Earthquake
Shadow Ball
Aerial Ace
I grew up playing with Zapdos with Extrasensory traded from XD to my cartridge but I've found Toxic works better. Drill Peck for any Hera or Breloom that starts getting out of control. Toxic mostly for Cradily and any other Double Team/Curse/Calm Mind mons I run into. T bolt kills the plethora of water types strewn about the facility. (I ALWAYS fall for the T bolt into Milotic mirror coat smh). It usually survives one Ice Beam even from STAB users. Can 1v1 most water/ice types. HP Grass kills anything quad weak to Ground (namely Tucker's Swampert). Fun fact: Mirror Coat doesn't work on HP Grass. Great synergy with Swampert, can also switch into Earthquakes. I used BrightPowder for the first 20 rounds or so but switched to Lum since I kept almost losing to Ice Beam freezes.
Swampert is a monster but I've found falls off when his EVs are spread too thin (grew up playing with my starter in the BF before I knew about EVs). This spread gives him the perfect balance of bulk and offense. The speed investment lets him outspeed other Swamperts. Ice beam kills every Dragonite set and almost every Salamence set. EQ kills most T-tar sets. Only weakness is grass types and anything with Giga Drain which Zapdos switches into nicely. Decades ago I used Counter for the Swampert mirror match but found it works best on Machamps. Not familiar enough with scouting to use it to its full potential, thinking of switching it out for Rock Slide. 1v1s anything that's not Grass/has Giga Drain.
Slaking is also a monster. CB Hyper Beam obliterates anything. Shadow Ball and EQ for coverage. Aerial Ace for Double Team mons that get out of control.
Usually I'll lead Zapdos/Swampert, whatever has more favorable matchups, and Slaking in the back to clean up. The Latis can only be dealt with by Slaking Shadow Ball. T Tar and D nite are scary but Swampert can 1v1 them. Again, this is my first attempt so far, just kinda vibing doing whatever. Lost once so far to Tucker 2 on Round 10 (my team was Swampert/Zapdos/Metagross), match ended in Swampert/Zapdos v. Latias and I lost because Calm Mind exists. For some reason Tucker ALWAYS uses Swampert Metagross against this team. Makes the final fight every 5 rounds really predictable.
My original team decades ago on my cartridge was my starter Swampert with randomly spread EVs, Zapdos traded from XD with Extrasensory, and Metagross with Quick Claw Explosion. Wayyyy back when all I had was my starter leveled to 70 something and somehow got Silver on the Pike with only Swampert lol. Suuuuuuper familiar with the Emerald Battle Frontier. Everything you guys are doing here is amazing! So happy to see there's such a community around this. If my cartridge still works I'll upload screenshots of my records but so far here's what I've got on Emulator (I've got the battery file but have no idea how to upload it):
Submitting records for 6 facilities. All done on level 50. This playthrough was done on both retail and emulator. (I have the hardware required to transfer save files between formats and have occasionally moved a save from cartridge to PC to take advantage of fast-forward options and to make RNG manipulation easier during team creation, then move the save back to cartridge to play out the run. Categorize that how you want.)
This is a decently common combo for the Gen 3 Frontier, and my iteration of it is most closely modeled after Mucks's post here.
Wasn't out to shatter any records with this run, just getting the gold medals and then riding the streaks as long as the team would take me from there. I started most of these streaks last summer, then took a break from Pokemon for over half a year, then randomly decided to pick it back up a couple weeks ago and just finish playing out whatever streaks were still active. Some of them ended abruptly due to rust.
Crobat4 ended my longest streak. Didn't write down more details on this specific loss. Other scattered notes from prior runs remark that I've also been done in by Ruin Maniac Xavier (Swampert3/Forretress3/Metagross3), an Espeon2 that I swapped Heracross away from only to let it get 3 Calm Minds in and sweep my team when I probably should have just rolled the dice with Megahorn from the start, and a Medicham2 that successfully used a combination of Salac/Endure/Reversal to tear through whatever I had left at the time.
Starmie took out the opponent's first Pokemon, then was confused by his Crobat. Swapped to Heracross and sacrificed him to get another shot, got confused again and hit myself to death. I went with Mystic Water as the hold item because I figured Natural Cure would solve most of my status-related woes, but perhaps that's not optimal in a format where you're only using 2 members of your party at any given time.
Led with Starmie so that Natural Cure can be used if statused from an event. Often went for any path that had a possibility of no event, regardless of consequence. Run ended due to a double battle (Manectric + Ninetales) that knocked out Starmie and Heracross early in the sequence, and Blissey had to try (and fail) to solo a subsequent battle before healing could be found. The most likely misplay was choosing not to have Starmie and Heracross double-up on a target; one of them probably could have survived had they taken out a single target quickly and lessened the damage taken in return. My gut instinct in general is to not double-up on opponents due to fear of Protect, but I never even bothered looking up movesets to verify whether that was a valid concern in the first place.
It's known that Blissey works very well as a cleric in this facility. My basic operation is to lead with either Heracross or Starmie throughout the dungeon (whichever tends to have the most advantageous match-ups against the current round's wild Pokemon) and lead with the opposite one against trainers (in order to conserve PP and HP for the team). When either Heracross or Starmie drop below ~60% HP, use Softboiled as a field move to recover between battles, then abuse advantageous wild match-ups to switch in Blissey so that she can heal herself with Softboiled in battle. Between Softboiled, Aromatherapy, and Natural Cure, this team can do a lot to conserve Hyper Potions and Lum Berries. I tried not to use Revives in the upper floors of each round, hoping to get to the remaining exits with only 2 party members in tow if I could. Fluffy Tails were mostly used against Explosion users in the later rounds. I used a pair of Scope Lenses as hold items for the majority of the streak, switching one out for a Choice Band on Heracross when I finally got one, then a Shell Bell for Starmie that was eventually replaced by a second Leftovers. Shell Bell might actually be more effective for recovery on Starmie across multiple encounters than Leftovers is, but by doubling up on Leftovers it frees up another spot in the Bag for another type of unique item.
A trainer's Crobat took me out. Outsped and OHKO'd Heracross and Starmie, then got a crit Sludge Bomb on Blissey. Beginning to think I have a really bad blind spot for this specific Pokemon. :V
Metagross @
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
IVs: 21 SpAtk
Adamant
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Sludge Bomb
- Shadow Ball
Replaced Blissey with a Metagross specifically for this facility, as I figured that Blissey would be dead weight here. Also swapped out Heracross's Choice Band for a Black Belt since switching is prohibited. The team worked well enough. Things eventually came crashing down to (IIRC) a Quick Claw Sheer Cold Lapras.
Jolteon @ Magnet
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 0 Atk
Hasty
- Substitute
- Wish
- Thunderbolt
- Bite
Salamence @ Lum Berry
Ability: Indimidate
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
Hasty
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Aerial Ace
- Rock Slide
Kingdra @ Mystic Water
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 0 Atk
Hasty
- Rain Dance
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Dragonbreath
Do not use this team. It was a first attempt that I decided to be stubborn with instead of adjusting as I went because I didn't want to make another team just for this facility. Go read somebody else's breakdown from somebody who actually knows how to optimize for this facility.
After looking over the Nature behavior chart on Bulbapedia, I decided to go for Hasty for my whole team, with the idea being that they would be roughly equally biased toward attacking and boosting at high HP, then biased toward attacking at low HP. This worked for Salamence, who carried my team. It had mixed results for Jolteon, who used Substitute intelligently but who frequently attempted to Wish for multiple turns in a row when at high HP. Kingdra was *awful* and would constantly choose Rain Dance for multiple turns in a row, regardless of how much HP it had remaining, and regardless of whether it had a supereffective attack against the current opponent. Fortunately, the opponent AI was often every bit as crippled as I was, and after getting over the Silver battle hump (which took 3 attempts), it was relatively smooth sailing to Gold. Mostly.
I also scored a 59-win streak for the Factory, but I manipulated the RNG in most rounds to get optimal drafts, which I think is against the spirit of this thread and thus am not submitting it for the list. FWIW, it's pretty funny when you mistime the draft manipulation in such a way that you end up giving your first opponent an extremely overpowered team, which did happen at least a couple of times.
Heracross @ Choice Band / Lum Berry
Ability: Guts
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
IVs: 21 SpAtk
Jolly
- Brick Break
- Megahorn
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
Starmie @ Mystic Water / Shell Bell
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 4 Atk
Modest
- Surf
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
Blissey @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 172 HP / 252 Def / 86 Speed
IVs: 4 Atk
Bold
- Seismic Toss
- Toxic
- Soft-Boiled
- Aromatherapy
Ability: Guts
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
IVs: 21 SpAtk
Jolly
- Brick Break
- Megahorn
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
Starmie @ Mystic Water / Shell Bell
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 4 Atk
Modest
- Surf
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
Blissey @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 172 HP / 252 Def / 86 Speed
IVs: 4 Atk
Bold
- Seismic Toss
- Toxic
- Soft-Boiled
- Aromatherapy
This is a decently common combo for the Gen 3 Frontier, and my iteration of it is most closely modeled after Mucks's post here.
Wasn't out to shatter any records with this run, just getting the gold medals and then riding the streaks as long as the team would take me from there. I started most of these streaks last summer, then took a break from Pokemon for over half a year, then randomly decided to pick it back up a couple weeks ago and just finish playing out whatever streaks were still active. Some of them ended abruptly due to rust.
Crobat4 ended my longest streak. Didn't write down more details on this specific loss. Other scattered notes from prior runs remark that I've also been done in by Ruin Maniac Xavier (Swampert3/Forretress3/Metagross3), an Espeon2 that I swapped Heracross away from only to let it get 3 Calm Minds in and sweep my team when I probably should have just rolled the dice with Megahorn from the start, and a Medicham2 that successfully used a combination of Salac/Endure/Reversal to tear through whatever I had left at the time.
Starmie took out the opponent's first Pokemon, then was confused by his Crobat. Swapped to Heracross and sacrificed him to get another shot, got confused again and hit myself to death. I went with Mystic Water as the hold item because I figured Natural Cure would solve most of my status-related woes, but perhaps that's not optimal in a format where you're only using 2 members of your party at any given time.
Led with Starmie so that Natural Cure can be used if statused from an event. Often went for any path that had a possibility of no event, regardless of consequence. Run ended due to a double battle (Manectric + Ninetales) that knocked out Starmie and Heracross early in the sequence, and Blissey had to try (and fail) to solo a subsequent battle before healing could be found. The most likely misplay was choosing not to have Starmie and Heracross double-up on a target; one of them probably could have survived had they taken out a single target quickly and lessened the damage taken in return. My gut instinct in general is to not double-up on opponents due to fear of Protect, but I never even bothered looking up movesets to verify whether that was a valid concern in the first place.
It's known that Blissey works very well as a cleric in this facility. My basic operation is to lead with either Heracross or Starmie throughout the dungeon (whichever tends to have the most advantageous match-ups against the current round's wild Pokemon) and lead with the opposite one against trainers (in order to conserve PP and HP for the team). When either Heracross or Starmie drop below ~60% HP, use Softboiled as a field move to recover between battles, then abuse advantageous wild match-ups to switch in Blissey so that she can heal herself with Softboiled in battle. Between Softboiled, Aromatherapy, and Natural Cure, this team can do a lot to conserve Hyper Potions and Lum Berries. I tried not to use Revives in the upper floors of each round, hoping to get to the remaining exits with only 2 party members in tow if I could. Fluffy Tails were mostly used against Explosion users in the later rounds. I used a pair of Scope Lenses as hold items for the majority of the streak, switching one out for a Choice Band on Heracross when I finally got one, then a Shell Bell for Starmie that was eventually replaced by a second Leftovers. Shell Bell might actually be more effective for recovery on Starmie across multiple encounters than Leftovers is, but by doubling up on Leftovers it frees up another spot in the Bag for another type of unique item.
A trainer's Crobat took me out. Outsped and OHKO'd Heracross and Starmie, then got a crit Sludge Bomb on Blissey. Beginning to think I have a really bad blind spot for this specific Pokemon. :V
Metagross @
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
IVs: 21 SpAtk
Adamant
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Sludge Bomb
- Shadow Ball
Replaced Blissey with a Metagross specifically for this facility, as I figured that Blissey would be dead weight here. Also swapped out Heracross's Choice Band for a Black Belt since switching is prohibited. The team worked well enough. Things eventually came crashing down to (IIRC) a Quick Claw Sheer Cold Lapras.
Jolteon @ Magnet
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 0 Atk
Hasty
- Substitute
- Wish
- Thunderbolt
- Bite
Salamence @ Lum Berry
Ability: Indimidate
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
Hasty
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Aerial Ace
- Rock Slide
Kingdra @ Mystic Water
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 6 HP, 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed
IVs: 0 Atk
Hasty
- Rain Dance
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Dragonbreath
Do not use this team. It was a first attempt that I decided to be stubborn with instead of adjusting as I went because I didn't want to make another team just for this facility. Go read somebody else's breakdown from somebody who actually knows how to optimize for this facility.
After looking over the Nature behavior chart on Bulbapedia, I decided to go for Hasty for my whole team, with the idea being that they would be roughly equally biased toward attacking and boosting at high HP, then biased toward attacking at low HP. This worked for Salamence, who carried my team. It had mixed results for Jolteon, who used Substitute intelligently but who frequently attempted to Wish for multiple turns in a row when at high HP. Kingdra was *awful* and would constantly choose Rain Dance for multiple turns in a row, regardless of how much HP it had remaining, and regardless of whether it had a supereffective attack against the current opponent. Fortunately, the opponent AI was often every bit as crippled as I was, and after getting over the Silver battle hump (which took 3 attempts), it was relatively smooth sailing to Gold. Mostly.
I also scored a 59-win streak for the Factory, but I manipulated the RNG in most rounds to get optimal drafts, which I think is against the spirit of this thread and thus am not submitting it for the list. FWIW, it's pretty funny when you mistime the draft manipulation in such a way that you end up giving your first opponent an extremely overpowered team, which did happen at least a couple of times.
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Would you advised using Ampharos or go with someone else as third? So far I’m using tauros and Milotic
I used Ampharos because it was the only bulky Electric mon available in Emerald, ideally sth like Raikou would be better for the role if you had access to it. Also, the Quiet nature it had turned out to work well in the Battle Palace.
Do you think sneasel will be good over Persian in spite 1 or kangaskan?
Kang is a bit too slow imo, but it could work. My initial idea was to run 3 mons like my slot 1, but realized it's very matchup reliant + loses to Greta's Gengar. The reason I picked Persian over Sneasel was Limber (essentially freeing up an item slot, as I'd probably run Cheri berry on Sneasel to not get haxed by Static mons). One thing that might work in Sneasel's favor though is that Ground types might click their rock type coverage rather than EQ.
I've been playing around with emulators recently (as a pretty-much lifelong cartridge player) and ended up deciding to bring my old Doubles team back for an experimental spin. Aiming to test some others out in due course, but my previous record with this squad is 127 so I'm hoping I'll surpass that fairly soon.
Running Brightpowder and Swagger on Manectric, since Swagger has great synergy with Gyarados' Lum Berry. You never really know how effective an item like Brightpowder is so I'm still weighing up exchanging it, but there's not really much else that works better for it. A Magnet might push some Thunderbolt 2HKOs to OHKOs, but against most stuff it doesn't make a noticeable difference, especially since this Manectric is Timid. Milotic is still a 2HKO even with a Magnet and a Modest nature, depressingly.
edit: Battles 105-112 now recorded.
edit: Battles 112-119, 119-126, and 126-133 now recorded. Delighted to have surpassed my old record! Battle 133 was a real stomach-clencher, somehow avoided those damned Quick Claw OHKO users up till now. Got very lucky with that second Protect.
edit: came back to this and did battles 134-140 and 141-147.
Running Brightpowder and Swagger on Manectric, since Swagger has great synergy with Gyarados' Lum Berry. You never really know how effective an item like Brightpowder is so I'm still weighing up exchanging it, but there's not really much else that works better for it. A Magnet might push some Thunderbolt 2HKOs to OHKOs, but against most stuff it doesn't make a noticeable difference, especially since this Manectric is Timid. Milotic is still a 2HKO even with a Magnet and a Modest nature, depressingly.
edit: Battles 105-112 now recorded.
edit: Battles 112-119, 119-126, and 126-133 now recorded. Delighted to have surpassed my old record! Battle 133 was a real stomach-clencher, somehow avoided those damned Quick Claw OHKO users up till now. Got very lucky with that second Protect.
edit: came back to this and did battles 134-140 and 141-147.
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Any advice with coming up with a snorlax EV spread I can use in multiple facilities? So many of the EV spreads on people's teams are weirdly specific so wanted some help understanding them. Thanks
Also was curious how people get 31 IV mons from breeding. Looks like there's a 20 or so minute wait for each RNG attempt in RNG reporter:
Also was curious how people get 31 IV mons from breeding. Looks like there's a 20 or so minute wait for each RNG attempt in RNG reporter:
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Look up how to use the battle video recorder functionality to skip large numbers of frames at once. You use it as sort of a "save state" function to resume your playthrough from a desired saved frame number.
73777 was also the frame I had saved for when I specifically wanted an all-31 spread or a 0-Atk spread, but 2387 and 15113 are also good for special and physical-specific spreads, respectively.
Come to the dark side and use different teams for different challenges so they perform better and you can enjoy exploiting each frontier challenge as an individual puzzle.
Snorlax is an interesting one because it's so slow you have to care about both defenses, so HP is important. But you have to ask yourself all kinds of questions about your team. Like do you want something that can tank pure special attackers, do you plan to have +1,+2,+6 curses, what pokemon do you plan to setup curses against? Are there certain threats like metagross you prefer to have extra attack in order to 2HKO? Note that while pouring 252 into HP gives you the best return for the combined def+spdef, it is actually a lopsided investment in spdef because of how high the ratio of snorlax's HP to def is already.
Figured this would be it, thanks
I want to get all gold symbols first then go from there, I noticed pyramid seemed to have a lot of ways to take advantage of it and thought that was cool. I'll build more specialized things later but rng is a big time drain.
I'll think about what I want to beat with snorlax and go from there, thanks
Did you use gengar or salamence as your lead in the gold battle?MOODY BLUES
After a pretty much disappointing Battle Dome run I ended up getting a bit burned out from playing Pokemon as a whole and took a necessary break from it. Now that I am back on playing Pokemon, of course, I had to return to my favorite generation of all time. I chose a facility that I previously didn't played so much before and Arena is indeed one of the most interesting ones. You can't switch but your Pokemon are chosen in a straight order and you get 3 turns to KO an opponent before the judge decided the outcome based on your move choices, accuracy and HP left. I would probably say Arena is one of the hardest since it eliminates one of the hardcore mechanics of the game which is switching out from an unfavorable match-up.
My initial Arena Team was something similar to this. I used Sub DD bulky Mence as a lead to grab an advantage with Metagross lined up next in case Ice types showed at the first slot and Starmie providing the super-effective coverage it is known for. Team was overall solid, but I wanted to try something else.
The biggest advantage Latios has as a lead over Salamence is that it gains immediate fire power without requiring multiple boosts. Most of the time, one Calm Mind is more than enough to sweep through various opponents which feels completely different from what Salamence can offer who needs more than 1 DD to sweep through teams. I passed Salamence to the last slot since I felt that this set will take more advantage as a late-game sweeper.
Well I was pretty excited when I started to use Latios, however, having a couple of losses where I ended up losing to a random burn from Fire Punch in Metagross and Latios getting haxed by crits, really had me thinking on a couple of potential changes. The biggest one was Gengar to which I started using a Sub Destiny Bond set with Lum Berry while having Metagross carrying its Metal Coat. However, after another loss to which I died due to Metagross burning from a Fire Punch from Gengar 4, I felt that the Lum belonged to him instead. Of course, this meant that the only item I could somehow use to not waste an item slot and not have Gengar wear something useless was a Petaya Berry. Salamence remained unchanged and after these changes, I can say the team massively improved and I got to the Gold rematch on my 2nd attempt.
デス１３ (Gengar) (M) @ Petaya Berry
IVs: 0 Atk
EVs: 38 HP / 252 SpA / 220 Spe
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Ice Punch
- Thunderbolt
- Destiny Bond
This was one of the biggest changes I had to do with the team but after having a discussion with submenceisop on the Discord, I convinced myself on making the change after talking to him about his previous experiences on the Arena. Gengar is pretty much a dominant threat on this facility for a good reason. Great defensive typing, Levitate and its Speed are its biggest attributes but the most important one is Destiny Bond. I can't stress enough how godly and broken this move is as it guarantees that Gengar will take down anything that is not faster than it and has enough power to take it down (which is not a huge barrier lol). But yeah, it does similarly to what Latios did on the first version of the team, however, Destiny Bond is truly the icing on the cake. Substitute is to Protect Gengar from status and annoying stat drops which comes in handy while also lowering your health in case you want something weak like Umbreon to guarantee it can take down Gengar and Destiny Bond it. Also, Substitute triggers the Petaya Berry on its third use due to the even number in the HP stat and grants a SpA boost that can come in handy and help Gengar. Other than that, Ice Punch and Thunderbolt makes for that necessary BoltBeam coverage combo that is too goo to pass on a lead.
220 Speed allows Gengar to outspeed all Sceptile / Dugtrio sets meaning that only Jolteon and Crobat can outspeed it. Max SpA is there to maximize the damage output and guarantee some KOs like Salamence 4. The rest goes into HP which gives 140 HP on Gengar and guarantees the Petaya to trigger upon its third Substitute use.
XBOX (Metagross) @ Lum Berry
EVs: 44 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 204 Spe
Ability: Clear Body
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
Adamant Nature
- Brick Break
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Meteor Mash
Metagross is your go-to physical sweeper to accompany Latios on a sweep. Whenever Latios falls to Ice types or hax, Metagross comes as the best possible back up for it. Meteor Mash will smash Pokemon like Articuno, Jynx and Glalie into pieces. Brick Break is to finish off Lapras and Walrein in case that they survive through Latios while also being the most accurate option vs Umbreon and Blissey without risking a MM miss. Shadow Ball is for Ghost types like Dusclops and Earthquake rounds up the coverage vs slower fire types and Steel types. Because using a Choice Band on a facility that disables switching is never a good thing, the Lum Berry was used instead. While weaker, the Lum guarantees Metagross can win certain match-ups like Greta's Gold Gengar and heal from Hypnosis while curing random status ailments. It helps a lot specially since Metagross is crippled heavily by paralysis and burn.
204 Spe allows Metagross to be faster than all Jynx sets who are 0 Spe neutral. This means that you can smash them into pieces before Metagross is put to sleep (just remember that Jynx 3 has QC, so watch out for it). Max Attack for power, and the rest into HP and defenses to get an odd HP number and overall increase its bulk.
Salamandra (Salamence) (F) @ Leftovers
EVs: 172 HP / 198 Atk / 140 Spe
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Substitute
- Earthquake
- Dragon Dance
I wasn't initially convinced on Salamence's ability to lead due to how incredibly difficult it is to set up multiple DD on only 3 turns and let alone the lack of raw power due to a weak STAB. However, Salamence's place on the squad is justified as a back up sweeper who can deal next turn with the Fire types that can beat Metagross while Intimidate + immunity to Ground helps it. Substitute makes Salamence immune to status and it's a guaranteed way to win vs Greta's Umbreon lead since status spammers will overall keep using the move and you get a free DD + Sub before damaging them which is very valuable on this facility to build up on boosts. AERO-ASS is your most reliable STAB and a sure fire way to win vs evasion spammers who get lucky enough to build on evasion boosts while guaranteeing Skill points on the judgement area. It's weak but it never misses and this is valuable on Battle Arena. Earthquake is just there to complement the coverage and exterminate Fire types like Arcanine and Houndoom.
172 HP EVs gives 192 HP which is a perfect Leftovers number and translates into recovering the lost HP from a Substitute in 4 turns. 198 Atk gives the same number in the stat and since it's a jump point in Attack it massively influences on getting the highest chance possible to 2HKO Skarmory at +6 with Aerial Ace. 140 Spe is used to outspeed all Heracross sets and kill them with AERO-ASS.
As an additional note, Salamence is chosen as a lead on the 4th round before you reach the 28th battle as you'll want the best lead matchup vs her Heracross which is singehandedly destroyed by Sub Mence. Metagross always remains on the 2nd slot.
Thanks for reading, hopefully we still keep Gen 3 active and running!
Did you lead with gengar or milotic on the gold battle?Update: I have finally achieved 200+ wins! My streak has ended @207 with Gengar, Milotic and Latios. Milotic tied against Meganium who set up lightscreen and Latios couldn't beat shadow ball Exploud of all things with lightscreen up. I'm not even sad about it. I've lost close to 200-300 times in the Arena and I finally got the luck I was looking for. Too many heart breaking losses to Haxrein, Lapras and other hax to count. I'm only going to explain the different Gengar set, as I've already explained the Milotic set with a wealth of detail.
View attachment 399037
Gengar (F) @ Cheri Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 84 Def / 204 SpA / 220 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Punch
- Destiny Bond
- Substitute
You might notice that Gengar's evs are different from the 36 Def/ 252 SpA/ 220 Speed that I was always using. My reasoning for increasing physical defense is quite simple: Snorlax. During streaks, I kept getting screwed over by QC Snorlax (lost close to 5 times in a span of 2 days to it). I reduced Gengar's special attack to a reasonable number that risked losing some damage rolls. I settled on 204 SpA, which guarantees the ko against 252 HP Salamence.
252+ Atk Snorlax Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 36 Def Gengar: 127-150 (94 - 111.1%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO. Far too risky.
252+ Atk Snorlax Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 84 Def Gengar: 119-140 (88.1 - 103.7%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
204 SpA Gengar Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Salamence: 204-240 (100.9 - 118.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
I have also experimented with many items for Gengar (petaya, lum, persim, magnet and cheri). I will go into my explanation why other items are not nearly as ideal for Gengar as cheri berry is.
-Lum Berry:
- Petaya Berry
- Too valuable of an item to use on Gengar. Gengar is already immune to poison, you will be using substitute against sleep powder grass types and jynx first and you already lose to prime confuse ray targets like Crobat without Destiny Bond. If no one else is using Lum, then Gengar may have it.
- Magnet
- Gengar should ko targets outright with a SE move or trade against dangerous targets. It's usually better to take the safe route, rather than try to take a greedy damage roll
- Persim Berry
- Increases some damage rolls (like making 0 hp starmie a guaranteed ko) and increasing some 2koes against walrein and Lapras. However, against starmie, you shouldn't be risking the T-bolt against Psychic Starmie (could be the 255 hp one or could be Starmie 7, which carries bright powder). Against Walrein 4 and Lapras 2, if you see surf/ice beam, I'm not risking the 2ko, I take the trade after using substitute. No questions about it.
-Cheri Berry.
- Very niche.
- Given Gengar's high speed, I use substitute fairly liberally to scout and you tend to trade or don't win those matchups anyways.
I've also made it no secret how much I appreciate Gengar. It's truly a S tier in the Arena and it also does help Milotic quite a bit. Gengar loves setting up a substitute against status spammers, provides additional ohko move protection, checks normal types and fighting types and trades against troublesome matchups for Milotic. These are all known things that Milotic can struggle with and Gengar patches up these issues quite nicely.
- This item is invaluable because Gengar loves it's speed.
- Incidental paralysis from Zap Cannon Forretress, Thunder Nidoking and dragon breath Steelix is also a thing among others.
- It eases prediction against known thunder wave spammers like Latios/Latias. You can safely destiny bond to catch every Latios/Latias. If either of the Lati twins reveals T-wave, you can substitute on the next turn and ice punch on turn 3. Otherwise, destiny bond is successful = trade.
- Same applies for Zapdos, Raikou and misdreavus. I've noticed that against Zapdos though, you want to attack first, as it can double team or lightscreen. Zapdos also seems to switch to thunderbolt on turn 2 if thunder-wave fails.
- Registeel. You HAVE TO ATTACK Registeel variants, as they are too bulky and you will lose if you don't tie MIND at least. I've painfully experienced losses to Registeel 6 because I didn't attack 3x in a row. However, Registeel 4 has thunder-wave. Having Cheri Berry here eases this prediction, on the off chance you are facing Registeel 4.
- Regice. Destiny Bond first. If it reveals t-wave, you can safely set up a substitute on turn 2. Same principle applies.
The only thing it doesn't really solve is double team spammers (no Aerial Ace, weakness to DT faint attack umbreon) and Snorlax.
View attachment 399038
Milotic (F)@ Leftovers
Level: 50
Calm Nature (+ SpD, -Atk)
Ability: Marvel Scale
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 36 SpD / 4 Spe
- Dive
- Recover
- Icy-wind
- Mirror Coat
Enkidu (Latios) (M) @ Lum Berry
Level : 50
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 28 HP / 12 Def / 244 SpA / 4 SpD / 220 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
- Calm Mind
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Psychic
https://pokepast.es/5cde506c0d83a2c2
Final Thoughts.
I want to thank Actaeon first. You were a big help optimizing sets, experimenting with me and for watching my streams. I am so glad we reached 200+ together. We've spent an absurd amount of time in the Arena (especially in the past month and a half) and we are finally rewarded for our troubles. We finally can move on to niche things and experiment for fun.
I want to thank Kommo-o, dgice, Valentino, Maizup Runeblade14 and anyone else I've missed. I appreciate your support and I'm glad people got to see this team put in the work.
I'm trying to do battle factory but im noticing all my opponents pokemon have 31 IV. i know about the battle tower glitch thing but i just lost a 77 streak there. do i have to do a new streak so it resets the IV's at the factory?
Yes, the IVs are based on your last Tower streak - whether active or previous. So if you want opponents to have the lowest possible IVs, start a new Tower challenge and forfeit the first battle so your most recent streak is displayed as 0.
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Is this suicine have good IVs or bad? And do you think suicine will work with bad IVs?
Reporting an 85-win streak on retail at the Lv.50 Battle Palace.
I initially came up with this pretty standard looking team as a flexible lineup I could attempt an all-gold symbol run with, but lucked into a pretty decent record at the Battle Palace on its first try. Upon reflection, the team seems particularly well-suited to succeed in the Palace without requiring overly strategic play or RNG-ing otherwise sub-optimal natures.
I actually got this record over a year ago and expected I’d eventually surpass it, but despite how consistently it gets to 42+ wins, 85 wins remains my best attempt. I figured I’d share it now, since I think other folks on retail would appreciate a Battle Palace team that uses 2-3 fairly standard Frontier Pokémon and their most common sets.
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Latios @ Lum Berry
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
IVs: 29/2/29/29/31/31
EVs: 28 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 220 Spe
Timid Nature
- Dragon Claw
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind
This is a standard set, nature, and EV spread for the most broken Pokemon in the Frontier, but it’s surprisingly uncommon on the Palace records due to weighted RNG move selection that often requires sub-optimal natures. In the Palace, Hasty seems to be the consensus optimal nature for fast attackers, but this team has led me to believe that there’s a case for a Timid Nature + Calm Mind over a Hasty Nature.
Outside of the obvious advantage of avoiding a 10% drop in defense, the key difference is that at normal health, a 3-attack + Calm Mind Latios will attack 72.5% of the time when Timid compared to 61.75% if it were Hasty. You’re more likely to fail to move at 14% vs. 2.5%, but you’re way less likely to get stuck boosting Calm Minds (13.5% vs. 38.25%) and inviting crits or bad luck when you really just need a reliable 2HKO on fast attackers you can’t easily switch to your teammates for (e.g. Raikou, Starmie, Salamence, Latios, Tauros).
At low health, there’s no question Hasty is far superior and Timid Latios will then throw your game basically 50% of the time, but I think there are trade-offs to requiring low health in order to function optimally. Substitute over Calm Mind of course mitigates that, but I think you miss out on the defensive and offensive benefits from the occasional Calm Mind that lets Latios win some otherwise hopeless match-ups.
Lum Berry is a must on Latios and is an enormous buffer to protect you from bad luck, which is even more critical in the Battle Palace and when you want to keep your Timid attacker above 50%.
Metagross @ Choice Band
Ability: Clear Body
Level: 50
IVs: 31/30/31/9/30/31
EVs: 156 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Meteor Mash
This is basically Werster’s 2-attack CB Metagross for his Emerald speedruns. It’s kind of ingenious, as it mitigates the middling probabilities for an Adamant Nature. Adamant with 2 moves means that 69% of the time Metagross will attack (53.5% of the time picking the optimal move), and once locked, Choice Band ensures the 69% chance for that one move alone. Outside of flyers, it was never that important whether MM vs. EQ was picked, as both will hit hard.
My EV spread is bulkier than Werster’s though, as Werster invests 212 EVs into speed specifically to outspeed Spenser’s Suicune. Since Milotic easily 1v1s Spenser’s Suicune, Metagross’ increased bulk is more useful while still outspeeding uninvested Base 81s like Milotic and Gyarados. Without calculating too deeply, I wanted partial speed investment over none, since at <50% health Metagross will much more reliably attack 85% of the time and give you a better chance to fire off a final attack. Metagross is definitely the most inconsistent member of the trio, but it’s hard to figure out what would better replace it. Its mix of power, bulk, and resistances is hard to replace easily.
I realized later that the EVs are slightly inefficient due to the imperfect IVs in Atk and SpD, but it probably doesn’t make a difference. The main idea is 92 Spe EVs, max Atk investment, and the rest in HP. I considered 124 Spe EVs to beat uninvested Base 85s like Suicune, Articuno, and Nidoking, something I may end up circling back to, but none of them are particularly difficult match-ups because of the last member of the team.
Milotic (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Marvel Scale
Level: 50
IVs: 31/4/31/31/31/31
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Def / 12 SpD
Bold Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Toxic
- Recover
I initially chose Milotic as I didn’t have the ability to RNG Suicune on retail at the time. Turns out Bold Milotic is arguably the best Pokemon in the Palace, and the perfect glue option for Latios/Metagross.
The biggest advantage you have in this facility is that your opponent’s sets are not optimized for the Palace and thus equally subject to bad RNG. Milotic is just perfectly equipped to capitalize off of inefficient turns, allowing you to win battles that would normally be a guaranteed loss.
There are two key factors that make Milotic particularly strong here relative to other facilities. First, a standard Milotic set will never fail to move as it runs all 3 move categories in the Palace. Second, a Bold Nature is not only Milotic’s best nature, it also weighs the RNG between its moves as optimally as possible for a defensive wall. At normal health, it prioritizes Toxic and then less so attacking moves. Below half health, it switches to prioritizing Recover, a huge advantage over Suicune in the Palace, who otherwise needs to rely on Rest.
Chip damage and chip healing is even stronger here as well, since you need to account for the frequent wasted or simply inefficient turns from both sides. Once you Toxic their wall, Recover + Leftovers is going to beat almost anything that Latios and Metagross can’t reliably beat. I beat a few scary Snorlaxes this way, though I’m not sure if I just got lucky that they all had Thick Fat.
Bold and max Def EVs gives Milotic balanced defensive stats while also maximizing value from Marvel Scale. The tiny SpD investment guarantees Milotic will survive Thunder from 252+ SpA Base 115s in Raikou-2 and Ampharos-1.
______
I ultimately lost to a Double Team Dusclops + BrightPowder Walrein. Due to Pressure and bad luck, I missed all of my Toxics on Dusclops with Milotic, and only after PP stalling unfortunately realized Struggle in Gen 3 was not going to recoil any more than what Dusclops would heal back with Leftovers. I actually somehow still KO’d it with one of my last Meteor Mashes, but then eventually lost after missing even more on a BrightPowder Walrein. If I had PP Max’d Toxic and/or Meteor Mash I probably win, which is unfortunate.
Trying in arena and consistently losing at the 50 mark, trying to go for gold..... grrrrr.
Curious what people's opinions are. I think I've had about 5 pretty serious runs that all failed, one of which died in the SECOND streak. Arena seems hard and I want to know what people think is a solid amount of attempts to get the gold symbol? These runs also take a long time and it seems like some people consider getting the gold symbols to be easy, and I don't understand that. I have a gengar snorlax latios team that I think is really good.
The battle frontier is all about avoiding bad luck, and in the arena, bad matchups can ruin your run. No matter what three you bring, if your opponent seems to have three counters in the correct order, there's not much you can do, unlike in the tower or palace. Also stuff like having my snorlax lose to ninetales on judging hitting itself in confusion 3 turns in a row. Not attacking or missing once can be a death sentence, especially if your pokemon has a GOOD matchup, because it means you'll probably send out the next guy who has a bad matchup.
As a reward for listening to my complaints: I've been using the Frontier Assistant by Actaeon. It seems to want to help you predict the team based on the moveset, but in my experience, it can sometimes only be 1 or 2 possible movesets given the specific trainer. I've modified it so that it will tell me what sets it could be. So far this has been awesome- no more guessing, no more scouting, I can just see what the moveset is for like 90% of guys. Also I noticed after one trainer it just quits out... so I made it loop back to the beginning for the next trainer. It's been a helpful tool. I will share my updated/cleaned up version after I use it a little more/have more time/BEAT GRETA!!!
MIB OUT!!!
Curious what people's opinions are. I think I've had about 5 pretty serious runs that all failed, one of which died in the SECOND streak. Arena seems hard and I want to know what people think is a solid amount of attempts to get the gold symbol? These runs also take a long time and it seems like some people consider getting the gold symbols to be easy, and I don't understand that. I have a gengar snorlax latios team that I think is really good.
The battle frontier is all about avoiding bad luck, and in the arena, bad matchups can ruin your run. No matter what three you bring, if your opponent seems to have three counters in the correct order, there's not much you can do, unlike in the tower or palace. Also stuff like having my snorlax lose to ninetales on judging hitting itself in confusion 3 turns in a row. Not attacking or missing once can be a death sentence, especially if your pokemon has a GOOD matchup, because it means you'll probably send out the next guy who has a bad matchup.
As a reward for listening to my complaints: I've been using the Frontier Assistant by Actaeon. It seems to want to help you predict the team based on the moveset, but in my experience, it can sometimes only be 1 or 2 possible movesets given the specific trainer. I've modified it so that it will tell me what sets it could be. So far this has been awesome- no more guessing, no more scouting, I can just see what the moveset is for like 90% of guys. Also I noticed after one trainer it just quits out... so I made it loop back to the beginning for the next trainer. It's been a helpful tool. I will share my updated/cleaned up version after I use it a little more/have more time/BEAT GRETA!!!
MIB OUT!!!
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However many you choose. I mean... it's all about how badly you want the gold symbol.
Honestly yeah, I actively despise the Arena. The Palace is bullshit but this place is just grindingly difficult: 56 wins feels much longer than it ought to here.
Re teambuilding: it's really tricky. In-game NPCs tell you the key to success is having a team in which each successive Pokemon covers the weaknesses of the last. That's partially true but it can lull you into overly simplistic thinking which is a mistake I made a lot in the past.
Instead the key is just having Pokemon which very few opponents can reliably OHKO. Latias, for instance, has several common weaknesses but she's so specially bulky that very few Ice, Dark, or Dragon moves will OHKO her outright and she's fast and powerful enough to 2HKO the vast majority of foes - that leaves Bug and Ghost, both of which are uncommon enough to be predictable. All but the most bulky variant of Heracross (and Greta's Heracross, as it happens) are outsped and OHKO'd by Psychic; you're very likely to lose to Scizor unless you're running HP Fire though.
But overall Latias (or Latios, though he can't survive all the same things Latias can) is a stellar choice, though you really just need something that can tear through teams reliably and get super-effective hits on lots of different foes. A setup sweeper isn't a terrible idea though you need one which can reliably find the time to do so: Salamence, Heracross, and Gyarados are all fearsome after one boost, but they all have incredibly common and exploitable weaknesses so I'd be wary of doing that. Metagross is an option, especially with Explosion and a Salac Berry; Gengar is another Pokemon I see mooted a lot, though I don't much like using it personally as I find it lacking in power it can make good use of Destiny Bond to score cheap kills against troublesome foes.
Some other Pokemon with very few exploitable weaknesses: Swampert (only one weakness, fantastic STABs, and bulky enough to get cheap kills with both Counter and Mirror Coat), Tauros (Intimidate blunts a lot of Fighting-type opponents, and STAB Double-Edge is fearsome - you'll want Hidden Power Ghost for Gengar, though), Starmie (plays very similarly to Latias, though has slightly less power and bulk), Kangaskhan (generally not quite as good as Tauros, but has a few advantages in that she has slightly better bulk and a far better movepool edit: including Fake Out, which is incredibly useful in this format), and Zapdos (never actually used it myself, but it's fast and capable of demolishing bulky stuff that threatens it like Walrein and Lapras, though you'll need HP Ice or Grass to deal with all the Rock- and Ground-types out there). One of the more successful Arena teams in this thread leads with Regice, which is bulky enough to survive even a lot of super-effective attacks.
Curveball option: Jynx. No, seriously. I've been playing a lot of Gen IV Factory recently and Lovely Kiss/Fake Tears gets shit done. Really keen to try it out in Gen III sometime, Timid max Speed beats very nearly the whole Frontier.
Anyway, just throwing some ideas out. The best Arena streak I've ever managed was using Latias-Heracross-Aerodactyl: Latias was usually capable of at least two kills, while Heracross mopped up a lot of her obvious counters - Aerodactyl was rarely needed because those two were so effective, but its blistering speed made it an incredibly good insurance policy when it was. A few people on here have used the "Lati sandwich" team to great success in the Arena; I've never tried it myself but don't see why it wouldn't be excellent.
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Coincidentally adding to the Battle Arena discussion, I'm thrilled to report a 69-win streak in the Battle Arena on retail (level 60 open level).
I have a love-hate relationship with this facility. On the one hand, the judging mechanic makes it a unique puzzle, one I enjoyed finding creative solutions for. On the other hand, as most people have observed, the fact that you can't switch means it's very easy to lose due to factors outside your control even with a good team, which can be hugely frustrating. Ultimately, I had fun coming up with this team and adjusting it until I won gold, despite all the frustrations I encountered.
Skarmory @ Leftovers - "Ace"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Attack, 252 Sp. Defense
Stats: 165 HP, 158 Attack, 188 Defense, 61 Sp. Attack, 140 Sp. Defense, 93 Speed
Ability: Sturdy
Nature: Adamant
Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Fly, Rock Slide
Flygon @ Choice Band - "Nabooru"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Attack, 252 Speed
Stats: 183 HP, 179 Attack, 102 Defense, 109 Sp. Attack, 104 Sp. Defense, 199 Speed
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Naive
Earthquake, Rock Slide, Hidden Power Bug, Fire Blast
Starmie @ Lum Berry - "Backspin"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Sp. Attack, 252 Speed
Stats: 151 HP, 97 Attack, 119 Defense, 196 Sp. Attack, 115 Sp. Defense, 196 Speed
Ability: Illuminate (lol)
Nature: Modest
Surf, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam
Yes, that's right: fully offensive Skarmory apparently can work in the Battle Arena. I originally planned for it to be a bulky Swords Dance sweeper before I found out that Skarmory couldn't learn SD in this gen... oops. By the time I learned the bad news, I had already bred and fully trained Ace, so I decided to try using him anyway. To my surprise, he was the least problematic member of my original team, made up of Flygon, then Skarmory, and finally Swampert. In this version of the team, Flygon had a nonrestrictive boosting item (I experimented with several, like Scope Lens, Soft Sand, and Hard Stone, none of which worked well) and Swampert was a mixed attacker with no bulk investment. I got the Silver Symbol with that team, but I never got past round 6 because Flygon and Swampert weren't hitting hard enough to reliably get OHKOs I needed and weren't bulky enough to stick around and win by ref decision. But Skarmory usually managed to get away with a KO or two, usually by judgement, so when I decided to rework the team, I kept him pretty much the same.
Partially inspired by Bayleef030's team, I decided to help Flygon hit harder by giving it a Choice Band, despite the risks that would entail in the Battle Arena. To minimize the chances of getting screwed over by locking into an ineffective move, I put it in the second slot and moved Skarmory up front. This worked surprisingly well--Skarmory won a lot of judgements thanks to Fly forcing misses, its resistance-rich typing, and its decent offensive coverage, and it could usually force ties on battles it couldn't win. The only things that could consistently beat it were Fire- and Electric-type moves, which Flygon could handle easily. I experimented a bit with the third slot before deciding on Starmie, who could perfectly cover for Flygon in a lot of cases. Its wide coverage made it so that I didn't have to worry much about which move to lock Flygon into in 2-v-3 or 2-v-2 situations, since Starmie had a great matchup against just about every Flying-type or levitator who could come in against Earthquake-locked Flygon.
One of this team's greatest moments was when Skarmory swept Greta. I knew going into the Gold Symbol battle that the worst-case scenrio was for Skarmory to tie Umbreon, then for Flygon to lose to Gengar, and for Starmie to sweep Gengar and Breloom. Thanks to some great luck, Skarmory beat Umbreon on a judgement before knocking Gengar out with a couple critical Aerial Aces. After that, Breloom was an easy KO. I ended up going almost two full rounds after that, finally losing to a team that seemed designed to counter mine (speaking informally, not accusing the AI of cheating). First was Aggron-4, which Skarmory lost to thanks to a third-turn Quick Claw proc while I was trying to Fly to force a miss--if Skarmory had been able to Fly first, it would've made that fight a tie, though that probably wouldn't have made the rest of the battle any better. Flygon easily took Aggron down with Earthquake, but was only able to get the next Pokemon, Walrein-4, down to about 33% health before losing to an Ice Beam. Starmie finished Walrein off with T-bolt, but got stuck facing Swampert-4 and losing to a Mirror Coat off its Surf. If I had been able to face this team in almost any other order, or if Swampert hadn't gone for Mirror Coat on the first turn, I think I could've won. That's the Battle Arena for you!
I enjoyed myself in this facility, but I'm glad to move on to something new. I'm still working on getting all the gold symbols, so I hope the next one doesn't take as long as the Arena. Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up, though, since one of the facilities I have yet to tackle is the Palace... We'll see how that goes.
I have a love-hate relationship with this facility. On the one hand, the judging mechanic makes it a unique puzzle, one I enjoyed finding creative solutions for. On the other hand, as most people have observed, the fact that you can't switch means it's very easy to lose due to factors outside your control even with a good team, which can be hugely frustrating. Ultimately, I had fun coming up with this team and adjusting it until I won gold, despite all the frustrations I encountered.
Skarmory @ Leftovers - "Ace"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Attack, 252 Sp. Defense
Stats: 165 HP, 158 Attack, 188 Defense, 61 Sp. Attack, 140 Sp. Defense, 93 Speed
Ability: Sturdy
Nature: Adamant
Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Fly, Rock Slide
Flygon @ Choice Band - "Nabooru"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Attack, 252 Speed
Stats: 183 HP, 179 Attack, 102 Defense, 109 Sp. Attack, 104 Sp. Defense, 199 Speed
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Naive
Earthquake, Rock Slide, Hidden Power Bug, Fire Blast
Starmie @ Lum Berry - "Backspin"
EVs: 6 HP, 252 Sp. Attack, 252 Speed
Stats: 151 HP, 97 Attack, 119 Defense, 196 Sp. Attack, 115 Sp. Defense, 196 Speed
Ability: Illuminate (lol)
Nature: Modest
Surf, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam
Yes, that's right: fully offensive Skarmory apparently can work in the Battle Arena. I originally planned for it to be a bulky Swords Dance sweeper before I found out that Skarmory couldn't learn SD in this gen... oops. By the time I learned the bad news, I had already bred and fully trained Ace, so I decided to try using him anyway. To my surprise, he was the least problematic member of my original team, made up of Flygon, then Skarmory, and finally Swampert. In this version of the team, Flygon had a nonrestrictive boosting item (I experimented with several, like Scope Lens, Soft Sand, and Hard Stone, none of which worked well) and Swampert was a mixed attacker with no bulk investment. I got the Silver Symbol with that team, but I never got past round 6 because Flygon and Swampert weren't hitting hard enough to reliably get OHKOs I needed and weren't bulky enough to stick around and win by ref decision. But Skarmory usually managed to get away with a KO or two, usually by judgement, so when I decided to rework the team, I kept him pretty much the same.
Partially inspired by Bayleef030's team, I decided to help Flygon hit harder by giving it a Choice Band, despite the risks that would entail in the Battle Arena. To minimize the chances of getting screwed over by locking into an ineffective move, I put it in the second slot and moved Skarmory up front. This worked surprisingly well--Skarmory won a lot of judgements thanks to Fly forcing misses, its resistance-rich typing, and its decent offensive coverage, and it could usually force ties on battles it couldn't win. The only things that could consistently beat it were Fire- and Electric-type moves, which Flygon could handle easily. I experimented a bit with the third slot before deciding on Starmie, who could perfectly cover for Flygon in a lot of cases. Its wide coverage made it so that I didn't have to worry much about which move to lock Flygon into in 2-v-3 or 2-v-2 situations, since Starmie had a great matchup against just about every Flying-type or levitator who could come in against Earthquake-locked Flygon.
One of this team's greatest moments was when Skarmory swept Greta. I knew going into the Gold Symbol battle that the worst-case scenrio was for Skarmory to tie Umbreon, then for Flygon to lose to Gengar, and for Starmie to sweep Gengar and Breloom. Thanks to some great luck, Skarmory beat Umbreon on a judgement before knocking Gengar out with a couple critical Aerial Aces. After that, Breloom was an easy KO. I ended up going almost two full rounds after that, finally losing to a team that seemed designed to counter mine (speaking informally, not accusing the AI of cheating). First was Aggron-4, which Skarmory lost to thanks to a third-turn Quick Claw proc while I was trying to Fly to force a miss--if Skarmory had been able to Fly first, it would've made that fight a tie, though that probably wouldn't have made the rest of the battle any better. Flygon easily took Aggron down with Earthquake, but was only able to get the next Pokemon, Walrein-4, down to about 33% health before losing to an Ice Beam. Starmie finished Walrein off with T-bolt, but got stuck facing Swampert-4 and losing to a Mirror Coat off its Surf. If I had been able to face this team in almost any other order, or if Swampert hadn't gone for Mirror Coat on the first turn, I think I could've won. That's the Battle Arena for you!
I enjoyed myself in this facility, but I'm glad to move on to something new. I'm still working on getting all the gold symbols, so I hope the next one doesn't take as long as the Arena. Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up, though, since one of the facilities I have yet to tackle is the Palace... We'll see how that goes.
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I say if you're getting to the 50s, your team is probably good enough to make it all the way. I don't know what most people would consider a reasonable number of attempts, but for the streak I just posted, I think it took me around 10 tries after I started using the team that eventually made it all the way. Best of luck in any case!
"but despite how consistently it gets to 42+ wins, 85 wins remains my best attempt" - I read the team description first and this lines up completely with my expectations, easy gold but 85 is actually quite the lucky spike. Milotic can carry hard, Latios looks like it is a coin flip whether it is useful each battle, and metagross I expect to be consistent but to fail you some 10% of the time more than a sassy band (or even certain hasty band teams). There just aren't ways to get out of tough spots once say milotic goes down to toxic or metagross misses a kill because timid latios doesn't sound dependable at all. I'm not saying the team is bad (it's better than most teams that have ever reached palace gold), I'm just saying the post-49-battle-palace is very hard to be consistent in.
I can see the argument for dragon claw on timid latios as neutral stab is beneficial when you're choosing randomly. But I can't really see any argument for timid, it's just worse percentages. If switched to hasty, I would much prefer surf over dragon claw for threats like regirock, marowak, donphan, thunderpunch magmar and so on.
I definitely agree on sticking to only the best two moves on metagross. I don't think changing the nature would really help metagross either though, it's just too slow for hasty or sassy in the higher palace. Lower palace it will totally work since your IV advantage can keep the speed high enough to move first after taking damage to trigger hasty.